September 2007 Archives

Romania's Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA) team have declared the second mission to test the human spaceflight Stabilo vehicle a success.

More news has emerged from the 58th International Astronautical Congress about India's co-operation with Russia and Japan's plans for more Moon probes following the successful launch of its Kaguya mission on 14 September

The Soyuz docked at International Space Station has done a little dance in preparartion for the forthcoming crew

MSNBC has a report about poor troubled Rocketplane

Hobbyspace.com has a link to a newspaper interview with software entrepreneur and rocket developer John Carmack

Meanwhile Arianespace is apparently going to market India's launchers. Seems a bit odd considering the Indian rockets are serious compeitition for the likes of Soyuz in French Guiana.

And for absolutely on reason whatsoever, other than the shear hell of it, here is a link to Alan Boyle's MSNBC Cosmic Log blog...

And finally it seems that US Democrat party candidates are all pretty gung-ho for space.

I took the following video with my little digital camera while standing outside Kennedy Space Center's press center on the night of 9 December as Discovery made the first night launch since the Shuttle Endeavour, about four years earlier.

Go here for NASA's video about its Dawn mission that launched today

For those of wanting quick links and less blurb, these are the stories that have peeked my interest in the last few days.

Go here for space.com's live coverage of the launch of NASA's Dawn asteroid mission

Russia is having to carry out more work to clean the crash site of its recent Proton-M rocket failure

JAXA now has a 19min promotional film for its Kaguya (Selene) mission

China is reported to be planning a lunar base after 2020

NASA confirms Space Shuttle Discovery's roll out date as 29 September

Spaceref.com has a report on international collaboration talks ongoing at the 58th International Astronautical Congress, this year being held in Hyderabad in India

Hobbyspace.com has some news bites that will be of interest to Rocketplane Kistler followers

The US Federal Aviation Administration's commercial space transportation advisory group is to meet next month

RIA Novosti reports apparent Russian intentions to build a non-military spaceport in its far east territories

And according to this article there is an Asian robotic Moon mission race underway

It seems India could be assembling satellites for European space comapny EADS Astrium too

If there is one thing that gets the acolytes of the self-annointed US "New Space" community of space programme prime contractor wannabes excited, it is the prospect of on-orbit fuel depots.
The scenario is this, you launch a rocket with far less fuel than its mission requires and it goes into an orbit that enables it to dock with an in-orbit fuel depot where it fuels up for a mission that it couldn't do with the fuel it could have carried from the Earth's surface. Here Hobbyspace.com's webmaster Clark Lindsey has a think about the New Space strategy and links to some fuel depot info. Personally I think the idea is nuts for low Earth orbit missions, but you may disagree.

Various updates on government programmes can be found around the blogosphere lately, with a video of the preparation and 14 September launch of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries built HII-A rocket carrying the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Selene, aka Kaguya, lunar orbiter probe, Chinese state run media claims of a location for China's new launch complex and that favourite past time of aerospace project managers, going over budget.

Reports from two big space conferences, including one about claims for the imminent death of NASA's Ares I, have been swirling around the blogosphere. One of the conferences is the AIAA Space 2007 event, held from 18-20 September in Long Beach, California, and the other is the World's space industry's annual jamboree, the 58th International Astronautical Congress - held every year somewhere different and this year it is Hyderabad, India. Next year it is Glasgow.

To begin my new Hyperbola (pr. hy-per-bo-la) blog this single scene from Stanley Kubrick's seminal sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey seemed as apt as anything.

In one shot it links mankind's first use of a tool, in this case a bone, to what Kubrick, and screenplay co-author Sir Arthur C. Clarke, thought would represent the most advanced technologies at the beginning of the 21st century, an orbiting nuclear weapon - not obvious from the movie but if you read Clarke's 1972 book The Lost Worlds of 2001 that's what it is supposed to be.

As Flight's technical reporter I like to tackle the World's space programmes from a technology point of view. The devil, after all, is in that technical detail the industry and its government space agency customers like to keep to themselves. Why Hyperbola? It is all about orbital mechanics, need I say more?

Rob Coppinger is a recovering powerpoint user and engineer who mistakenly thought journalism was more glamorous than production engineering. He has been writing about aerospace technology for over seven years and there is still no hope of parole.